PRictionary

13th Hour

n. that nanosecond when you realise that despite all the blood, sweat and tears, a brilliant big idea, ample budget, delicately poised spin and a PR bung big enough to tempt a Premiership manager, you’ve just MISSED THE DEADLINE. See also: Management.

Apocalypse

n. faced simultaneously with Deadline, Creative Block and Spell Checker, it is easy to see how St John was struck with the Revelation that the End of the World is Nigh. See also: Stress and Paranoia.

Big Idea, The

n. brilliant caffeine- or alcohol-fuelled concept built up by creatives late at night and demolished by management in the morning. This spawns the desire by creatives to undermine management which in turn generates furious howl ‘What’s the big idea?’. See also: The Big Idea.

Boss

n. a knob or stud; a dome-shaped protuberance; a wholly self-centred person who sits behind a big desk and makes a lot of noise in the misguided belief that this will give the impression that he is actually achieving something great, or at all. (Scot) adj. hollow, empty [Obscure].

Creative Block

n. monolithic structure designed to extend the working day by several hours. See also numbskull, latent and downright lazy.

Deadline

n. a unit of time, often historic (eg ‘last week’, ‘two hours ago’ etc) measured in weeks and months by normal people and nano-seconds by members of Her Majesty’s Press. See also: 13th hour.

n. the sending and receiving of written messages by electronic means thus freeing people up from the tyranny of having to talk to each other, even (sometimes especially) if they are sitting in the same office, at the same desk. See also: Stress, Paranoia and Apocalypse.

Largesse

n. the generous bestowal of funds in a magnanimous manner, enabling the creatives to be creative, the Big Idea to flourish and the Pack of PR to be everything you ever wanted. See also Cloud Cuckoo Land, The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Management

n. the art or act of giving enough information to start a job, but not enough to finish it. See also: teaboy.

Pack of PR

n. anything you like, everything you need or nothing at all. See also: The Big Idea.

Paranoia

n. a form of mental disorder aggravated by constant delusions that the gnome in the computer is picking only on you and that the unremitting, unreliable corrections that it insists you make to your carefully crafted work are the result of barefaced spite. See also: Spell Checker, Stress, Apocalypse.

n. practitioners claim this as the noblest of the martial arts. Involves copious amounts of blood, sweat, tears and toilet roll. See also: The Dung Fandango.

Silence

n. the space between the full stop and the closing of quotation marks. Abstention from communication by word of mouth, even when sitting in the same office, at the same desk. See also: Email.

Social Media Reach

1 n. very large number, comes a good way after ‘statistics’ in the PR Periodic Table (see also lies, falsehoods, propaganda and carpet bagging). 2 n. Acrobatic exercise performed by agency staff.

Social Media Spend

ph. something or nothing. Often both. See also ‘Largesse’.

Spell Checker

n. irritating little gnome that lives inside the computer. Gets its rocks off by criticising your every stylish flourish, however small, yet deliberately ignoring many typing mistakes, such as ‘form’ for ‘from’ etc. Likely to be first up against the wall come the revolution.

Spin

n. to draw out and twist into threads; the art of turning a pig’s ear into a silk purse. See also: Pack of PR, Statistics.

Staff

n. a prop, pole or support; a body of people who sit in the same office at the same desk not communicating by word of mouth, turning pig’s ears into silk purses for fictional sums of money, whilst doubting the management. See also: Email, Silence, Spin, Teaboy.

Teaboy

n. a boy who makes and serves tea in an office or factory; a highly talented copywriter who is regularly hen-pecked into performing menial tasks by the rest of the office staff. teaboyism n. irrational hatred, rivalry or bad feeling towards teaboy by the rest of the office staff.